Cavium Ships Multi-Format HD Set Top Box SoC

Cavium’s Celestial CNC1800 Family of High-Performance, Low-Cost Solutions Is Optimized for High Definition Video Broadcast, Video Chat and Interactive Set Top Boxes

SAN JOSE, CA — Cavium, Inc. (NASDAQ: CAVM), a leading provider of highly integrated semiconductor products that enable intelligent processing for networking, communications and the digital home, today announced the Celestial™ CNC1800L multi-format, high definition Set Top Box System-on-a-Chip (SoC) processor is sampling to customers for Over the Top (OTT), IPTV, and Digital Cable Set Top Box applications.

Internet OTT and digital cable entertainment markets are growing rapidly. Informa Telecoms and Media predict that OTT-to-the-TV viewers will outnumber traditional managed IPTV viewers by 2013 globally. Additionally, according to a recent report from China Daily News, China cable TV subscribers reached 187 million in 2010. China aims to digitalize all of its cable television networks by 2015, and is accelerating the convergence of cable television, telecommunications, and the Internet TV markets.

Cavium’s new Celestial CNC1800L optimized for OTT, managed IPTV and Cable TV networks, combines multi-standard video decoders supporting both legacy MPEG-2 and highly compressed H.264 video and multimedia content. These features ensure compatibility with existing and future network deployments and access to streaming internet video and services. The high performance multi-channel audio decoder and post processor in the CNC1800L SoC provides consumers with a cinema quality audio experience. An advanced security and digital rights management engine enables protected content from the internet or over managed cable networks to be securely decrypted, viewed, stored or time-shifted.

“The Cavium CNC1800 has been chosen by GuangXi Cable as the set top box platform of choice for time-shifting and content storage capability,” said Mr. Deng GangPing, CTO at GuangXi Cable. “The first phase deployment to our Province’s customer base was very successful and we are looking forward to working with Cavium on the next generation SoC CNC1800L”

The 1800L also includes an ARM CPU and sophisticated 2D graphics capable of running industry standard middleware and open source environments, such as iPanel and Android. Additional features include content storage and processing for recording of live broadcasts and creation of media libraries.

The Cavium Celestial™ CNC1800 Processor Family

The Cavium Celestial CNC1800 family of processors is optimized for set-top boxes using high definition video broadcast formats. Advanced features enabling highly differentiated products in cost sensitive markets include H.264 and High Definition Motion JPEG video encoder. These features allow recording and time-shifting of analog broadcasts, video chat, video conferencing and video transcoding. Integration of advanced picture processing, scaling, de-interlacing and noise reduction technology ensures consumers receive the best possible picture even when content is delivered at a low-bit rate and at a low video resolution.

Additionally, all members of the Celestial CNC1800 product family include Cavium’s WiVu™ wireless video distribution technology. This market leading feature enables Set Top Box products to receive and stream video from a variety of mobile devices and consumer appliances such as smart phones, tablets, laptop and desktop PCs.

The Celestial CNC1800 family uses high performance ARM CPUs with memory management units supporting DDR2 and DDR3 DRAM, programmable multi-stream transport de-multiplexers and digital content recording engines. The Celestial CNC1800 family also supports conditional access standards, including Nagravision and the digital rights management technology required for OTT video applications and services.

Availability

The Celestial set-top box SoC samples are now shipping to key customers. Cavium will be demonstrating the Celestial CNC1800 at Broadband World Congress in booth L3 in Paris, France from September 27-29, 2011.